Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 29, 2025
"You will stay here to-night?" asked the woman. "Me go back now," said Jan. Cummins' wife came very close to him. She did not urge, for she, too, was suffering the torture of this last parting with the "honor of the Beeg Snows." It was not the baby's face that came to Jan's now, but the woman's. He felt the soft touch of her lips, and his soul burst forth in a low, agonized cry.
He had no weapon; but as his hand rested upon the empty knife-sheath at his belt, there came to him a thought of the way in which Mukee had avenged Cummins' wife, and he turned again upon the trail. He no longer touched the low- hanging bushes.
"Never," said Jean. His dark face flashed joyously as Iowaka's sweet voice came to them, singing a Cree lullaby in the little home. "Some day Melisse will be singing that same way over there; and it will be for you, Jan Thoreau, as my Iowaka is now singing for me!" An hour later Jan went slowly across the open to Cummins' cabin.
Sometimes a nation ceases to breathe in the last moments of its dying chief, and the black wings of calamity gather over its people, enshrouding them in a strange gloom and a stranger fear; and so, because the greatest of all tragedies had come into their little world, Cummins' people were speechless in their grief and their waiting for the final word.
That night, in the dim, sputtering glow of an oil-lamp, John Cummins and Jan Thoreau solemnly set to work to thrash out the great problem that had suddenly entered into their existence. To these two there was no element of humor in what they were doing, for into their keeping had been given a thing for which God had not schemed them.
And she admitted that she had always been haunted by the suspicion that the highwayman with whom Cummins had grappled might have been Collins, who had so strangely disappeared after the robbery. No; she could not identify him as the man who asked about Cummins' valise. She was not sure about his voice. She was too much frightened to be sure of anything.
Melisse, tightening her arms around his neck, made his promise sacred by offering her little rosebud of a mouth for him to kiss. Later, the restless spirit slumbering within his breast urged him to speak to Cummins. "When Melisse is a little older, should we not go with her into the South?" he said. "She must not live for ever in a place like this."
Each day, as the weeks went on, and the spring sun began to soften the snow, she became a little more like the wild children at Lac Bain and in the forest. For Jan, she had kept her hair soft and bright, because he praised her for it and told her it was pretty. Now it hung in tangles down her back. There came a night when she forgot her prayer, and Cummins did not notice it.
With his long hunting-knife flashing above his head, he plunged into the throng around the caribou, crowding and jostling with the others, his voice rising in shrill cries as he forced himself through to the edge of the fire. Cummins was there, kneeling with turned-up sleeves and greasy hands beside the huge roast, and when he saw Jan he stared at him in wonder.
There were twenty-four estates under the same attorneyship with the Belle, and they were all in the same prosperous condition. A short time before we left Barbadoes we received an invitation from Col. Barrow, to breakfast with him at his residence on Edgecome estate about eight miles from town. Mr. Cummins, a colored gentleman, a merchant of Bridgetown, and agent of Col. B., accompanied us.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking